Read Star Risk - 01 Star Risk, Ltd for Free Online Page A

his radar, his IR.
    Slick and clean.
    He came to the huge doors that opened into the planetary treasures room, went past them, to the small door inconspicuously labeled staff.
    The big doors, and this small one, were alarmed.
    It took only a few seconds for him to wire around the sensors on the staff door, so that he could have blown it open and nothing would have gonged.
    Goodnight was about to pick the lock, when he decided to make another check.
    He felt prickly, as if he was being watched. That was one of his own senses, field trained, not one provided by Alliance neurosurgeons.
    Nothing.
    He took out a springload and a small pick, bent over the lock, then caught himself.
    Cute.
    Most cute.
    The lock had a built-in alarm, one which an official key's tiny transmitter would keep from setting off.
    Goodnight opened his belt pouch, brought out a small tube, a bit fatter and longer than a pen. He turned it on, held its end against the keyhole, watched its light blink green, green, then flash red.
    The light held red, then went green. The "pen" had found the alarm's frequency and blanked it.
    Picking the lock itself was very easy.
    Goodnight opened the door, but didn't enter the room, lit only with two lights at either end.
    He'd seen the floor-alarm pickups during the day, sneered at them. He didn't plan on getting to the jewels by walking.
    Goodnight touched his jaw switch, transitioned, checked the room. Nothing.
    He braced, jumped for a long display case three meters away.
    He cat-walked along its edge, feeling the metal bend under his weight, recover.
    Another leap, another case.
    Five meters out from the wall was his target case.
    Goodnight wasn't looking at it, but at a very solid light fixture overhead.
    He took a roll of very light climbing rope from his pack. Its end was stickied, for three meters, and with a light weight.
    He whirled it slowly, then faster, then cast it upward. It coiled around the fixture, almost fell free, his heart almost stopping, then wrapped tightly around the fixture.
    He tugged, and the fixture held firm.
    Goodnight reached up as high as he could, moving quickly, feeling his battery charge running, and swung out, kicking hard, into emptiness, then swinging back high, and the case was under him, almost at the apex. He let the rope slide through his fingers, landed a little harder than he would have wanted on the case.
    But the heavy plas didn't break, and he was crouched atop the case. He took a tiny flash from a pocket, and shone down.
    The one worry he'd had�that they moved the jewels into a vault at night�vanished.
    They gleamed up at him, a friendly gleam, wanting to be in his possession, luring him.
    Chas Goodnight grinned happily, put away the flash, and took out a small laser cutter, and made his first cut, along the far side of the case top.
    He never heard the panel slide open just below the ceiling. The inefficiently human guard, one of four covering the jewels, guards changed every hour on the hour, leaned out, aimed, and fired a tranquilizer dart into Chas Goodnight's side.
    He thudded to the floor, and then the floor alarms went off and lights flared.
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    SEVEN � ^ � M'chel Riss was getting tired of solitaire when her intercom buzzed.
    "Yes?" she said in her most cultivated executive manner, although it was probably just Jasmine saying she was calling down the lunch order to the sandwich shop in the basement.
    "Work," King's lovely whisper came.
    Without waiting for more details, M'chel boiled out of her office. Her other two partners were moving very fast in the same direction.
    Their suite was now decorated in the currently popular eclectic style, with old-time prints interspersed with moving wall sculptures, the furniture made of steel, wood, and leather padding.
    But Star Risk still didn't have a job.
    Unless�
    "You got?" Riss asked, as she came into the reception area, where Jasmine sat